Posts Tagged → psychology

The New Normal and words that I probably won’t say at my father’s funeral

My dad died early in the morning on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026.

What had started out as a trip to the E.R. for abdominal pain spiraled into more and more problems until, eventually, the cancer was just too much for his system.

It feels too personal to go into details, but my memory hasn’t been … working the way it should for the past few days. All of us were by Dad’s side right up until the end and everything has turned into this blur of nurses and doctors and hospice reps and phone calls and late-night drives and texts and chicken fingers from the hospital cafeteria and, at some point, my brain said, “You know what? I need a break. We’re going to shut down some non-essential functions.”

And so, my writing about all this is a way of helping my poor brain keep track of events.

(I can’t believe I’m still doing doodles for a post like this)

My brother has told me a couple times in the last few days that he doesn’t think it’s really “hit” him yet.

I’ve responded both times by asking, “How do you think it’ll ‘hit’ you? Like, what do you anticipate will happen when it does?” Because that’s what a therapist would ask — it’s a leading question to help you understand that you’re not tied to any tracks; there’s no steam train about to run you down. You’re having a trauma response that makes you feel like there’s an immanent threat, but really there isn’t.

(Today’s armchair psychologist’s report is brought to you by: Years and Years of Teaching Seminars!)

My brother says he doesn’t know what it’ll feel like when it hits. I think the whole “hitting” thing is a myth.

Or, I should say, I’m not as worried about getting hit as I am worried about “The New Normal.”

What I think happens when you go through a traumatic event like this is your brain slowly starts incorporating new, bad habits that result from the trauma and/or getting rid of good habits you may have once had. If you’re not careful, those temporary habits become actual full-time habits when maybe you don’t want them to and all those good habits you once had are gone forever.

Like, right now, there’s no way I’d be able to go out and do fun stuff. I absolutely don’t feel like it. If a friend called and asked, “Hey, do you want to play board games or go to a concert or see a movie?” I’d probably respond (internally) with, “No way! I’m too sad to do that. I want to stay home and watch A Relaxing Walk Across Skyrim and take a nap for the fourth time today.”

That’s a big, obvious example and I’m sure you think, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense, I can see that.” But how many tiny and seemingly-innocuous habits are there that I’m losing or gaining?

For example, at one point in the last week (although the specific day escapes me), I realized that I hadn’t brushed my teeth in two days. I had similar realizations at other times along the lines of, I haven’t had any food since breakfast yesterday. And When was the last time I showered? Christ. I don’t remember.

And mental habits! I don’t even know how many times I’ve told myself, “I am not going to think about that right now. I’m just not even going to consider that particular problem right f*cking now.” It could be a bill or an email I have to send or the question of what to with my father’s collection of erotic sculptures from across 6 continents. I will just shove it aside like a passenger on a Japanese train, without so much as a care, and continue on about the business of being miserable.

That’s what I think happens to you when someone you love dies; They leave a hole, and a big part of that hole are the habits — physical and mental — that keep you happy and healthy. Your sadness becomes a part of “The New Normal” and you’re left just being … worse.

Sigh. This is not at all what I intended to blog about when I started.

Whatever. I’m still here. Still typing.

Ultimately nothing did happen

This blog wasn’t exactly a new year’s resolution; it just so happened that I started blogging again at the beginning of a new year and was somewhat resolved to blog every day. Like any pedestrian chump, though, I fell off after about a month.

Sad!

The trick is, I’ve learned, not to beat yourself up over resolutions that you make. Buddhists always say “Everyone suffers,” but if I could add a western spin to that idea, I’d say, “Everyone fails.”

It’s just true. No matter what you do, how often you do it, how good you are at it, or whether or not that thing is your passion, you will have setbacks and you will eventually face failure.

Imagine two people who make a resolution to go jogging every morning. Both people, being regular people, will eventually fail at this resolution in some wayshaperform. It just happens — they have a sick day or they forget to set an alarm or the ground is covered in ice — the world conspires against them and they can’t jog.

Womp womp! But how do they react to this failure; that’s the question.

Person A says to themselves, “My perfect record is tainted! I’d planned to run every day, but now that I’ve failed, what’s the use? Everything is horrible and life is a crap chute!” So they stay home and feel bad about their failure because it wasn’t perfect.

Person B says, “Oh, I couldn’t jog yesterday. Whoops!” and then goes jogging anyway.

I have, unfortunately, always put myself in the former category. I wish I wasn’t there, but here we are. I beat myself up for failing at goals that I have set for myself and I’m not sure what to do about it.

Other than to keep plugging away at this blog as if nothing happened. Because, ultimately, nothing did happen.

Dumb & dumber & grades

I swear I’m getting dumber and dumber as the days go on. It’s like my brain is turning into a dried up husk.

It’s not that I’m forgetting how to speak or do math (although I feel like I’m a lot slower at both of those things than I was, oh, five years ago) but that I’m feeling a lot more scatter-brained. I am all over the place.

You know that feeling you get when you walk into a room and forget why you’re there? That’s called an event boundary, and it basically happens because your mind starts a new “instance” of itself when you are in a new context. When you’re in the kitchen, kitchen-you can be perfectly aware that kitchen-you needs kitchen-your airpods, but when kitchen-you goes into the bedroom to get them, a whole new you pops up! It’s Bedroom-you, who doesn’t run the same set of processes. Bedroom-you isn’t thinking about how kitchen-you’d like to listen to a podcast while kitchen-you’re cooking; bedroom-you wonders if bedroom-your sweatpants are in the dryer or in the hamper. 

Hence, it feels like you “forgot” why you went into the bedroom just because your mind switched modes. Go back to the kitchen and, odds are, you’ll remember what you were after.

It’s like a crappy magic trick! You’re the one with the saw and you’re the one getting cut in half!

I left my kindle at work so I can’t draw pictures

See? I can remember that stuff perfectly well, but I’ll still fall victim to this psychological treachery.

The worst part of it is the way my attention span has been impacted. It’s not that I’ll be sitting and reading a book and then go, “I’m bored. I should do something else.” But I will sit down to read and find myself suddenly standing up to go do something else when I don’t even realize I’m doing it. Only when I’m elbow deep in dirty dishes will I go, “Oh, yeah, I was reading.”

This is just evidence

Anywho. I’m guessing that the problem is related to my sleep, which makes sense, since I just got done blogging about how bad my sleep patterns are.

It’s tough to decide what to do about this. Except, of course, have a cup of tea.

Of my inevitable mental decline

In other news, after a second round of grades put in the gradebook, hey, look at that, the average grades in most classes are normalizing. There aren’t nearly as many failing grades as the administration was worried about. Why? Because a student’s overall performance is no longer tied to one or two data entries.

It’s almost as if freaking out about off-track data during the first few weeks of school was a total waste of time. 

Who knew?